Food calorie counters can take the guesswork out of meal planning for dieters and for people who want to improve their eating habits. Experts at Nutrition Data recommend four key steps for success with calorie counting, "make a daily record of everything you eat, determine which foods contribute the most calories to your diet, make better choice substitutions for those foods, repeat." The following list highlights the features of the most thorough and user-friendly food calorie counters available online.
The Daily Plate
The Daily Plate is Livestrong's personal calorie counter. It first calculates a person's recommended calories per day, then lets the user type in what he eats for each meal, or search for the nutritional content and calories of a specific food. Other areas of the Daily Plate let a user add fitness activities, share Daily Plate with other Livestrong members and find out about healthy foods suggestions for specific conditions like diabetes or cancer.
The Calorie Counter
The Calorie Counter lets a user scroll down to choose a food category, then type in more specific information about the food he wants to look up. For example, people can select "snacks," then type in "pretzels." After scrolling down through a site generated list, one can select more specific information about a food item to get an idea of the number of calories consumed.
Nutrition Data
Nutrition Data works in a similar way that The Calorie Counter does, but with a slight twist. With Nutrition Data's search engine, people can type in a food, then select a category in which to look for it. From there, users can narrow down the search. This site has another feature which allows dieters to look for foods by nutrient.
Calorie Lab
Calorie Lab uses one search field. Users can type in a restaurant or food item and the Calorie Lab will show them a list of food which can narrow down their search. Another tab on the website takes users to a page that shows how many calories they have burned during a particular exercise. The site also includes diet and exercise equipment reviews.
Users of the Google browser can add a calorie counter to their iGoogle page. To count calories, users click the breakfast, lunch, dinner or miscellaneous box. A list of commonly consumed foods appears, then users can scroll through to find one that closely matches what they ate for that meal. The iGoogle calorie counter also includes a search box so users can look for a food. Under settings, dieters can also add in their weight and height to find out their recommended, daily calorie intake.
My Pyramid Tracker
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a nutritional assessment and calorie tracker page on its website. Using the tools is free, but requires an user name and password. Along with keeping track of what people eat, it provides users with an evaluation of what they ate for the day in consideration of their recommended nutritional intake.
Calories Count
Calories Count, is sponsored by various manufacturers of low-fat and low-calorie foods. The website includes a free food calculator, a body mass index calculator and articles about artificial sweeteners and fat replacements. Users can also find out how many calories they should consume per day.
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